Turin’s Seeyousound commemorates David Bowie

23/02/2016 - A few names, such as Miss Sharon Jones and Nick La Rocca, are all that’s needed to sum up the second edition of the first festival in Italy dedicated entirely to music-related films

Low by Renaud Cojo

Turin’s Seeyousound International Music Film Festival is back for its second edition from 25-28 February 2016 at the Cinema Massimo, this year featuring a tribute to David Bowie. Indeed, the sudden passing of the Thin White Duke will be commemorated by Low, the feature debut by French director Renaud Cojo, which will have its world premiere at the gathering: this musical voyage for the senses is accompanied by the well-known performance by Philip Glass of Bowie’s album of the same name.

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The first festival in Italy dedicated entirely to music-related films, developed from an idea by the Choobamba organisation and brought to fruition in conjunction with the National Film Museum, will also host the Italian premiere of Danny Collins, starring Al Pacino. The story takes place 40 years ago, when a letter from John Lennon that was never received could have changed the life of the titular character forever. It was written and directed by Don Fogelman, the screenwriter of Last Vegas and Crazy, Stupid, Love, who is making his directorial debut with this movie.

The opening of the second edition of Seeyousound will be entrusted to B-Movie: Lust & Sound in West-Berlin[+see also: trailerfilm profile] by Jörg A Hoppe, Klaus Maeck and Heiko Lange, a documentary presented at the 2015 Berlinale and now screening at Seeyousound a few weeks ahead of its Italian theatrical release. It explores a decade that began with punk and ended with the Love Parade in Berlin.

In these difficult times, Seeyousound will offer an international collection of six films entitled “Music Is the Weapon”, dedicated to the strength of music as a weapon for bringing people together and to the power of the movie camera in the fight against social indifference. The titles comprise Don’t Think I’ve Forgotten: Cambodia’s Lost Rock and Roll, They Will Have to Kill Us First, Sumé – The Sound of a Revolution[+see also: trailerfilm profile],Mama Africa[+see also: trailerfilm profile], Viva Cuba Libre: Rap Is War and Shake the Dust.

Also worth noting at this second edition of the festival are the films in competition, split across three categories: features (“Long Play”), shorts (“7inch”) and music videos (“Soundies”). The works have been selected from among 374 oeuvres hailing from every single continent, from New Zealand to Norway. The section containing the eight features in the Long Play International Competition hinges on a common thread that is more topical than ever: that of survival and the resulting determination of one’s own destiny through music. The titles include Miss Sharon Jones! by Barbara Kopple; Blood, Sweat and Tears, a biopic of famous Dutch folk star Andrè Hase; Sicily Jass by Michele Cinque, about Nick La Rocca; Quilapayún, Beyond the Song by Jorge Leiva; and For This Is My Body by Paule Muret.

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